Little Yogis

Children love movement activities so I decided to introduce yoga to my little friends. Yoga has a lot of benefits: it develops strong and flexible body, increases balance, body awareness and coordination, it develops core strength, calms the mind, expands imagination and creativity, relives stress and improve body-mind connection. I was really happy to find that children loved doing yoga since our first yoga session and now Wednesday is our yoga day!
We start our session with the song such as Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes to jump right into movement and get children excited. We then practice about ten poses; lots of animal poses with which we make animal noises to make it more interesting, transportation poses such as boat pose - singing Row Row Your Boat along. Some days we take turns and let each child teach us a new pose they come up with or the one they remember from the previous practice. Towards the end of our session we use the breath ball to take deep breaths to start calming our minds and bodies  and get ready for savasana - the relaxation. Each child takes a turn to take deep breath with the extendable ball then answers a question such as "what was your favorite part of the day today?" It is important to reflect on the day and it seems like perfect timing to do so at our yoga practice when the mind is clear. We finish up with savasana and foot massage which all the kids love!
I am planning on bringing in more props and extend our breathing techniques in our upcoming sessions.
Enjoy few pictures of the little yogis below!

Elephant Pose

Stretching

Breath Ball